- Associated Press - Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The Columbia Daily Tribune, Jan. 1

Charter schools

On the way in Missouri?

With increasing Republican Party dominance in Missouri comes an expectation more charter schools might follow.

Conservative politicians often tout charter schools as good alternatives to “government schools,” by which they mean typical public schools operated by public school districts. They tend to blame failures of public schools on “socialism,” not taking into account the fundamental role of public education to accept all students, a burdensome but vital responsibility charter schools do not have to meet.

When charter schools fail, they simply close and go out of business, returning the role of universal public education to the public sector.

In Missouri, charter schools operate only in Kansas City and St. Louis, where certain public school districts have gotten in trouble. Charter schools must have a sponsor. The University of Missouri sponsors five. Public funds are transferred along with students to charter schools. Public school districts can serve as charter school sponsors but usually oppose their formation, as is the case with Columbia Public Schools. Superintendent Peter Stiepleman says the state should not authorize additional charter schools until it fully funds the public school foundation formula and puts money into early education. On this basis, it will be a cold day before charter schools expand in Missouri. Indeed, under Stiepleman’s formula none of the current charter schools would have been authorized.

Charter schools are unlikely within the confines of the Columbia school district because most patrons here are happy with the status quo. Charter schools crop up where parents are dissatisfied.

Conservatives tout the virtue of competition. They say charter schools can operate more like private business, firing or prodding incompetent teachers at will and generally burdened with fewer government constraints, but ultimately charter schools can quit without ever having to provide education for the masses.

Education always has been provided by a mix of private and public schools. Indeed, private schools came first. Public schools followed when citizens realized the need for universal access. Charter schools arose as a way to transfer public funding to a new breed of schools thought to offer a blend of public funding and private school outcomes.

The result was predictable. Some charter schools do well. Others fail. Public school officials tend to oppose the idea because it siphons public school funding, often making it even harder to operate their already difficult public school districts.

The most optimistic supporters of public education say all children can be taught effectively by excellent teachers. They challenge the idea some children begin schooling unwilling or unready to learn. If teachers are good enough, all students can succeed, they say.

I believe they are right in theory but bound to run aground on the shoals of reality. We are barely able to provide enough funding for the compromised public school systems we already have, a basic lack that won’t be cured with the charter school movement.

Charter schools tacitly propose to solve this riddle by providing the benefits of private education with public funding, as if public funding somehow will apply to a different sort of school with different sorts of students and fewer obligations to the general public. Charter school officials dispute this characterization. Gerry Kettenbach, director of MU charter school operations, says charter schools are public schools with more autonomy, an oxymoron. Either schools have the burden of accepting and teaching all students in their districts or they don’t. Charter schools don’t. If the going gets too tough, they don’t keep going.

Public regulations seek to maintain a level of quality in charter schools, but if they fail, sponsors have an obligation to close them. It’s possible, of course, for a charter school to be better than the public school in a given district, but not because it does the same job better. Charter schools are not required to provide the same service to society that public schools must give.

There is no change of structure that itself will transform the quality of universal education. Charter schools might stimulate all of us to do a better job of funding and operating public schools, but they are not a quid pro quo alternative.

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St. Joseph News-Press, Dec. 29

Wage mandate distorts market

Party politics aside, Missouri is past due for a change in how it balances the interests of the average taxpayer with those of organized labor.

One example:

An individual who wants to build a quality home typically will research who does a good job and seek bids from two or three contractors. The lower the bids, the more home this person can afford.

This freedom to seek competitive bids for labor is a factor in holding down construction costs, even among the best of builders and for the nicest of homes. The same is true for a wide variety of private commercial projects.

Why, then, is this freedom not available to local school boards trying to stretch tax dollars to provide the greatest public benefit?

It’s regrettable the party holding the governor’s office in recent years has defended a standard known as the prevailing wage law, which sets a minimum wage rate that must be paid on public works projects.

The rate differs by county and for different types of work. In Buchanan County, for example, it specifies a rate of $34.24 an hour for a tile setter and $24.80 an hour for a general laborer.

This heavy-handed legislation presumes a state formula for wages is needed to ensure local school projects are done with quality, craftsmanship and a regard for safety. In fact, most observers see through this and understand its primary function is to inflate wages on these projects - a market distortion that forces taxpayers to subsidize this labor.

Rural lawmakers, including Rep. Allen Andrews, R-Grant City, a former member of the school board for Worth County R-III, long have sought relief from this statute. Andrews notes taxpayer dollars go as much as 30 to 35 percent further in Kansas, which does not have a prevailing wage requirement.

We favor repeal of the prevailing wage law, trusting in local public officials to balance the need for quality construction with cost considerations.

Short of that, we support the kind of broad local-option exemption proposed for school districts under legislation that will come before the General Assembly in January.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 31

NFL is gone, MLS is uncertain, but NGA kept St. Louis in the game

A year that started with furor over the NFL and ended with debate over MLS should best be remembered for another set of initials: NGA.

St. Louis bookended 2016 with sports-and-stadium controversies, but the end of March brought news that one thing wouldn’t change: The city would continue to be the western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. In assessing what stories from 2016 will carry over into 2017 and beyond, the NGA decision is the big one.

A $1.75 billion construction project was on the line, along with more than 3,000 current jobs and the possibility of thousands more in years to come. Even with a donation of land valued at $14 million for the project, NGA was a far better public investment than any sports stadium could ever be.

NGA could be the long-sought catalyst for turning around long-neglected parts of north St. Louis. It offers high-tech synergies with the burgeoning Cortex technology center and similar research efforts planned by St. Louis University. By itself, NGA is not a game-changer, but it keeps St. Louis in the game.

It seems like longer, but it was one year ago today that Stan Kroenke, as part of his pitch to his fellow National Football League owners in support of his efforts to move the St. Louis Rams back to Los Angeles, included a gratuitous rip-job on St. Louis as a place to do business.

Given the tens of millions of dollars that area taxpayers have spent over the years underwriting this multibillionaire’s business endeavors, it was remarkably bad form. It was some comfort locally that the Rams were just as hapless back in L.A. as they’d been for the past decade in St. Louis.

Besides, now we’ve got a proposal that the public should pay 60 percent of the $200 million cost of a Major League Soccer stadium. That idea quickly ran afoul of the state’s governor-elect, Republican Eric Greitens, who may have put the kibosh on the deal by announcing he opposed $40 million in state tax credits for it.

Mayor Francis Slay still wants to build it, but the week after the NGA announcement, he announced that 16 years was enough and that he would not seek a fifth term in 2017. How long is 16 years? Slay took office five months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American Airlines still had a hub at Lambert St. Louis Airport. Anheuser-Busch was a locally owned company, and the Cardinals - who were talking about a new stadium - had a rookie phenom named Albert Pujols.

Slay consolidated power at City Hall like no mayor before him. He pushed charter schools, historic tax credits, tech jobs, gay-friendly policies, bike paths and anything else he thought would appeal to young residents. He regained local control of the city police department and brought the firefighters’ pension system to heel. His surprise decision not to run again will mean a shakeup no matter who wins the election this spring.

That election will test the city’s “new Democrats,” young activists with fewer ties to traditional ward organizations. They were behind the upset victory by Bruce Franks Jr. in a special election in September for the 78th Missouri House district seat. Incumbent Penny Hubbard had defeated Franks in the August primary, but a court found irregularities in absentee voting and ordered a new election that Franks won easily.

Franks’ victory may be pyrrhic. He’ll find himself on the back bench in a Missouri House that is overwhelmingly Republican, across the rotunda from a Missouri Senate that is overwhelmingly Republican, one floor up from a governor’s office that will be occupied by Greitens, the new Republican governor.

Greitens emerged from a four-way GOP gubernatorial primary on the strength not of party connections nor policy ideas, but a cynical media campaign, paid for by outside donors, centered around his brief service as a Navy SEAL and his familiarity with high-powered firearms. Riding the Donald Trump wave, the GOP swept all five races for statewide office.

Greater St. Louis made little progress on its biggest problem, its fractured system of governance, in 2016. The city’s overall crime rate was a little lower, and depending on the toll for this final weekend of the year, the city could wind up with slightly fewer homicides than 2015’s 188. But the city remains a dangerous place for young black males; more than 72 percent of homicide victims were black males ages 17 to 39. Ninety-two percent of homicide victims died of gunshot wounds.

In gun-happy Missouri, too often the wrong people had firearms. In October, St. Louis County Police Officer Blake Snyder was killed by one of them, and Ballwin Officer Michael Flamion was left paralyzed by a gunshot wound.

The branch-office-town trend continued as Bayer AG of Germany acquired Creve Coeur-based Monsanto in a $57 billion deal that still needs government approval. The two companies said most Monsanto jobs here would be unaffected.

Best non-NGA news from 2016: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the metro area added 41,600 jobs between November 2015 and November 2016, the best year since 1991. Those numbers don’t jibe with other government estimates and could be adjusted downward. Until then, we’ll take the good news and carry on.

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The Springfield News-Leader, Dec. 27

The human trafficking conversation

State legislators have, in recent months, started to warn about the dangers of human trafficking in Missouri.

The world of trafficking is indeed serious and terrifying, and there are many places where it’s a primary concern of law enforcement.

In fact, officials say the U.S. Court in the Western District of Missouri leads the nation in such cases.

Nonprofit groups, including some in Springfield, have formed to fight this problem.

Local criminal justice officials, on the other hand, say such cases are incredibly rare in Springfield.

So what’s the disconnection?

The first answer might simply be in definitions.

Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams explained different crimes in tiers.

The blanket term human trafficking would include people being taken against their will, away from their home, for any purpose. There are two prominent reasons for trafficking. One is for free, or usually very cheap, labor.

The other reason explains the second definition, and next tier - sexual trafficking. The other primary reason people are taking from their homes is to be used as a sex worker.

Earlier this month, a man from Chicago was arrested in Springfield and charged with sexual trafficking. The prosecutor on the case, and local police, all say that sort of case is very rare.

The next tier is forced prostitution. This is sometimes what people may refer to when they talk about trafficking, but it doesn’t fit the bill exactly. It’s still very serious, and a bit more common in Springfield, but still very rare compared to other parts of the country, Williams says.

The next tier is simple prostitution, which is again more common than forced prostitution. But again, Williams says there’s very little prostitution in Springfield.

Williams said all of these problems are reportedly worse in Kansas City and St. Louis, hence the statewide push to crack down. However, he says there’s little evidence to show Springfield should make it a priority.

Are Springfield police doing enough to investigate?

Williams says his officers are trained to spot trafficking and the department has investigated tips, but nothing has come of it.

He says there probably is some amount of trafficking, but he doesn’t have the evidence to make it a priority yet. He has said he’d like to start a vice unit, which would more deeply investigate such claims.

There’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, however. He would need funding to start such a unit, but it may be hard to convince city leaders that it’s a priority when there’s no evidence. On the flip side, it may be hard to find evidence without a vice unit.

The discussion of human trafficking is likely to continue, and for our community to be engaged in that conversation, we should know what we’re talking about.

First of all, that means understanding the different definitions. The distinction between types of trafficking and forced prostitution is, in particular, an important one. The first suggests more of a system or network, while the second is more likely to be controlled locally, on a small scale. In cases where police do find such crimes, it tends to be the small-scale, unorganized type.

We should also have good evidence of what we’re discussing. We may feel in our gut that there’s more trafficking going on in Springfield than we know about. That’s fine - it’s good to listen to our instincts. But we should understand that our instincts don’t equal facts, and we can’t jump to conclusions. We’re not a community that can afford to waste public safety dollars on a problem that doesn’t exist.

Hopefully, further study, and community conversation, will lead us on this issue. Let’s just make sure we’re all using the same language.

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